WEBVTT

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this right here is one of my favorite movie moments the rumbling gutful Roar

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of the ball run it's

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incredible wait on a

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soundbar oh movie Magic exposed Nakamichi sales pitch here is absolutely

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wild I mean One does not simply position a soundbar against a multi-channel audio

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system that costs tens of thousands of dollars and yet they did so okay now

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kamichi if that is your real name I'll bite I'm going to rip my SVS home

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theater apart I'm going to replace it with your Soundbar and I'm going to see

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if maybe I could have saved myself thousands of dollars and a heck of a lot

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of hassle I'm also going to see if I can tell you about our sponsor ug green

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their 145 wat power bank is equipped with power delivery and Quick Charge 3.0

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fulfill your onl go needs check it out at the link in the video

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description I like tinkering so I went the discreet route for my home theater I

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got some SVS Ultra towers and surrounds in ceilings courtesy of clips and a pair

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of SVS Subs all wired through my walls

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to a den AV receiver these components

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together cost an eyeing 13,6

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$600 not including the price of install which Probably sounds completely Bonkers

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to the average consumer who's buying $200 Bose soundbar like that one that we

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covered last year but if you spent any time on the home theater subreddit

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you'll know that somehow we're still in bang for the buck territory which is

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what makes Nakamichi claims so unbelievable I mean who do they think

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they are no really though old school

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audio nerds are going to remember Nakamichi history making cassette and CD

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players with the dragon name indicating their top-of-the-line products but that

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company failed to transition from analog to digital and in 1998 they were

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purchased by a Chinese holding company Grand Holdings 4 years later they filed

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for bankruptcy in the 2000s their shambling corpse was reanimated to sell

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iPod docs and portable DVD players with only modest success and more recently

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the company has returned to the high-end audio scene to FOC us

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on Sound Bars let's see if they should

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have stayed buried the first thing you're going to notice about the dragon

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when you get it is that it is huge and really heavy to get a sense of the scale

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here's that bestselling Bose sound bar off of Amazon and here is the Sonos Arc it

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completely dwarfs them both now obviously these comparisons aren't

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entirely Fair because the dragon justifies its massive size by packing in

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a spping 17 distinct drivers including

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four that reflect off the ceiling to give you a sense of height and these

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Nifty air motion Transformer tweeters that work like an accordion squeezing in

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and out to produce mid to high-end frequencies with extra Clarity

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supposedly but I think we've gotten ahead of ourselves a little bit let's

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look at the rest of the package quad subwoofers you say I mean there are dual

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8in drivers in each of these two subwoofers but my speakers have multiple

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drivers in them and I don't call them three speakers this won't be the last

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time we see Nakamichi stretching the truth we'll come back to that but first

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there's the surround speakers which each feature four board drivers on the sides

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and an angled upward firing driver that can be rotated toward your listening

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position to improve overhead audio effects these bring the total number of

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drivers to a whopping 31 with a circuit blowing Peak power of 3,000 wats

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thankfully you'll never actually need that much power at once because at even

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50% of maximum volume we are well into

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uncomfortably loud territory which means we should be able to get theater-like

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performance out of this package then right well what are we waiting for let's

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give it a shot good

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Clarity the mids feel a little empty to me it's pretty big sound from a soundbar

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though yeah and I think having the nice big surrounds is great sometimes you'll

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get systems where you have these small surrounds and they sound ply whenever

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you have surrounding but these are big enough that you still get a similar

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sound all the way around you good volume of sound

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surround is okay yeah it's not as good as the HTA

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9's it's not as good as a like dedicated

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5.1 yeah that's beside me that ain't behind me the subs sound pretty good I

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will say that the subs are great I think that the bass is like Punchy and um it's

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quite musical but the issue is that it just doesn't get that low let's pull up

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baby driver and you will see exactly what we're talking about

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like did you hear that just now on the Baseline that walking downwards it gets

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a little boomy at the top because it's trying to compensate for the dip where

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the crossover lies every criticism I have of it though

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has to be tempered by the fact that realistically in my mind what I'm

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comparing it to is a system that costs several times as much if I was comparing

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to something else I wouldn't be sitting here going yes but the dip quite for me

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I remember when we when when I was testing this earlier I had listened to

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your home theater first and then I listened to the dragon and then I went

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oh but then I came back 3 days later

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after the weekend listened to the dragon first and I was like this is awesome

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switching over to my quote unquote spoiled

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speakers you just hear there's like when when when there is that base punch is

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just like like you actually feel it Y

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which you don't get from the Nakamichi which is really disappoint considering

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they are big subwoofers still I mean at

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half the volume of the ones that are here though and you know what yeah it

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sounds more natural it's a better

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balanced experience but at what cost yeah and I

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was going to say in terms of the treble performance the Nichi is kind of awesome

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yeah I don't really miss it like listening to just the music I was like it still sounds really really good

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coming back to the bass though part of the reason that it doesn't punch the way

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that the SVS Subs do is that while Nakamichi advertises performance down to

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20 HZ what we found was uh actually

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closer to what 30 to 45 before it just

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rolls off completely yeah it's um it's really disappointing and I think it's

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fine to have base that only goes that low but be honest be honest about it if

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you guys want to experience these two systems side by side by the way we're

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going to have a Boral recording that we created in collaboration with bla from

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headphones.com and we're going to have those in unlisted links in the video

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description it's pretty darn good in

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terms of spatial performance but I've definitely encountered better we've

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spent a lot of time comparing the Nakamichi Dragon to a full-fledged

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system I mean they invite that comparison but let's try doing something

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that's a competitor of the same form factor like the Sonos Arc yeah I like

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the arc so I'll be interested to see how it holds up but I just want to take this

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moment to acknowledge how good the IO is

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on the Nakamichi The sonus Arc gives you one HDMI so you better have EC Nakamichi

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doesn't have any Wi-Fi but it does have

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a bajillion inputs and outputs and it does still support Bluetooth and what's

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nice is that having no microphone while it does mean that the calibration is

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more manual and tedious means that there's no support for voice assistance

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which some people might see as a downer but some people might actually consider

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to be a plus yeah now let's listen to what the arc can do

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Sonos is unironically a good little soundar it's a it's a good little

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soundar the nakami dragon does sound

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better better it's worth noting I don't have a pair of Sono speakers to throw in

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the back but even the sound signature is

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smaller I will say that the Sonos sub is

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admirable it's surprisingly good for its size is it it's uh they knocked it out

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of the park with that and something we've got to consider in all of this is any sound bar is only going to be as

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good as the limited options that you have available to expand it sure you can

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add surrounds to your Sonos as long as you're willing to overpay for them and

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find a way to mount them on your own speaking of flexibility where are you

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going to put the Nakamichi Dragon stuff it doesn't come with mounting hardware

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these stands that we got while nice are 300 bucks that's kind of a bummer yeah

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so like any solution then it has its advantages and disadvantages but I think

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it boils down to this the dragon provides I'd say about 80% of the

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experience that my AV setup provides at a quarter of the price that is a massive

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value but and you probably know this if

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you've ever bought something like a graphics card the issue is that it's

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easy to look good when you compare against something much more expensive

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because the farther up the product stack you go the worse value you tend to get

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so if we were to compare the dragon then against something that costs a little

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less than half the price like a Samsung q990 C that has many of the same

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features but is more modest in size and has just a single subwoofer well you

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could make a pretty similar argument there that you're getting a lot of the

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performance of the Nakamichi and regardless of your budget

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there are strong arguments to be made still for going the DIY route personally

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and I'm sure I'm going to ruffle some feathers here I don't find that the

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height channels really add that much for me so for two grand or even four grand I

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might go with a mean 5.1 surround setup

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and an AV receiver that is going to give me better quality sound right out of the

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gate and that I can sell and buy and

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upgrade over time to turn it into something truly exceptional like the

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link in the video description if you guys enjoyed this video hey I did too I

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love checking out stuff like this bold bombastic claims are so much fun to

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investigate whether they fall well short or fall even just a little bit short

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like today if you guys enjoyed this video maybe go check out the ones about

00:11:36.920 --> 00:11:41.839
my home theater set up we've apparently got a playlist of them